William Mougayar: The Business of Decentralization

Peter Thiel argued in his book ‘Zero to One’ that the way to build a great and highly profitable company is to build a monopoly. But with decentralized technologies, there is a real question whether these monopolies can be built or whether the monopolies will end up being publicly owned goods (like Bitcoin) that can’t be monetized directly.

William Mougayar, who is an experienced tech executive and angel investor, has been writing extensively about these issues and was one of the investors in OB1, the venture-backed company launched by the founders of the decentralized market place Open Bazaar. He joined us for a discussion of the cryptocurrency space, Ethereum, Open Bazaar and monetizing decentralized technologies.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Bitcoin as the new, thin cloud
• His long-term predictions about where the space is going
• What kind of business models are the most promising
• Why he chose to invest in OB1, the company behind Open Bazaar
• What the state of Venture Capital in the cryptocurrency space is

Episode links:

• Predictions in Cryptography, Blockchains and Consensus Protocols
• The Old Cloud is Dead, Welcome the New Cloud
• The Business Imperative Behind the Ethereum Vision
• An Operational Framework for DAOs
• Union Square Ventures: Introducing OB1
• Peter Thiel: Competition is for Losers

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/086